Your guppy comes to the glass when you’re in the vicinity. Squirrels pause when you’re close by and make
eye contact. When you play your bassoon
by the roadside, cows in the pasture gather round to listen.

Then, around noontime, you snarf down a double cheeseburger. Voila.

It’s a good life, unencumbered by qualms.

I know. I’m not eating every kind of
animal. It’s just that karma thing
lurking. It’s begun to creep into my
consciousness.

You might remember a video that circulated not too long ago. It shows a giant great white shark caught somewhere
down south. That beast weighed in at
almost 2000lbs and he looked to be 15 feet long. His bloody snout brushed the pier where he
was strung up by his tail, hanging lifeless – a trophy.

Tourists were taking turns standing next to him with the proud fishermen who
caught him and having their pictures made.

In the video, somebody’s mom sidles up next to the behemoth shyly, pulling
her shoulders up, happy, squinting into the sun. While she waits for her husband to find the shutter
button on his smart phone, the shark lurches to life, flexes his body toward her and
works his jaws in one last futile attempt at revenge.

Oh yeah. That mom must have had fish sticks for
lunch. Sharky was tuned in on his way
out.

This kind of thing is worrisome to us devotees of ichthyology who also love
our Mrs. Paul’s.

It’s one thing when a self-righteous teenager calls you out on your hypocrisy,
but the animals themselves? Oh no. We can’t have that.

This all rushed to the forefront this week when the New York Post reported
that a Chinese chef preparing a delicacy – cobra flesh soup – was killed by the
snake he was getting ready to eat.

Photo: en.wikipedia.org

Peng Fan set the Indochinese spitting cobra’s head aside while
chopping its body for the soup. Then,
when he tried to toss the reptile’s head in the trash 20 minutes later, it bit
him, injecting him with its fast-acting venom.

There it is. Mark it. Another sign that the living creatures have had
it with being eaten by the hypocrites. Their heads are
watching.

“All reptiles can function for up to an hour without the rest of
their bodies,” a herpetologist said after the incident, as though this would
somehow be helpful.

The report goes on to say that diners in Fan’s restaurant heard screams
coming from the kitchen: “Suddenly there
was a lot of commotion,” one woman said. “We did not know what was happening . . .
After we heard that, we did not continue with our meal.”

I’m glad that last bit was included.
It shows that we hypocrites aren’t stupid.
We know when to slip away – before there’s a full rebellion from the
menu.